Blog 5 communication for teaching a class and talking to parents

Hi, everyone ✌

For this new entry, I'm going to discuss about a pretty important topic for my development as an English teacher and it is how to adapt public speaking strategies to communication in classroom settings and when talking to parents. First, I will highlight the role of communication in my development as a teacher. Second, I will describe and evaluate how my team teacher uses her voice (pace, intonation, volume) and body language (proximity, movement, gestures, hands) to communicate and engage the students. Third, I will recount the insights and recommendations I gathered from my interview with my team teacher about communication with parents. Finally, I will reflect on the importance of communication and my responsibility as a teacher when addressing both students in class and parents.

The guiding questions for this blog are:

How does the team teacher use their voice (volume, pace, intonation) to engage and maintain audience attention?

What non-verbal communication strategies (eye contact, gestures, posture, facial expressions) do the speaker use to support their message?

Ask your team teacher how they deal with communication with parents. (emails, Q10, meetings, etc)

Communication and its role in teaching

The main purpose of communication is to give a message. The way we communicate will make the difference if that idea is listened and understood or not. 

When we communicate, we want to share a gift, an idea, that might change the world for our audience, so as a speaker I must make sure that my idea is shared correctly and that my public is opened to listen. The first main aspect to take into account is the verbal language, in other words, what I say and how I say it. There are many factors to take into account when talking. The most relevant are our pitch (high or low), intonation (the variation of the pitch), stress (highlighted words or phrases), pace (fast or slow), tone of voice and the quality of the delivery (pauses, articulation, accent). That is why the same massage can be said by two different people, but it is not going to be said the same way. For example, a monotone voice can unhook your audience almost instantly, a fast delivery could make your massage unintelligible, a wrong stress can diverge your message and so on. Nonetheless, verbal communication alone it's not enough. Non-verbal communication functions as an extra help to give more strength to our words. The way move our hands to emphasize some words, the way we stand in from of the public, and even the gestures we do with our face can captive our audience and grab their attention if done correctly.

Some recommendations for public speaking:

- Practice your speech, but don't memorize everything. Sometimes people prefer to improvise and go with the flow of the speech (improtum speech), while others rehearse and memorize every single word (extemporaneous speech). The idea to be confident and know your topic, while be open to improvise sometimes.

- Use signposting language like: to start, now, continuing to conclude, so you can manage transitions in your delivery.

- Know your public. Depending on your audience, you will have to make some adjustments in your delivery and nonverbal communication to make yourself understood and to engage them.

What communication strategies use my team teacher in her class? Do they work?

Overall, in my opinion, my team teacher has an excellent use of strategies to communicate with the students in both courses. The most common strategies she uses are volume and intonation. She speaks in an optimal volume so all students can hear, even at the back of the classroom. Likewise, she likes to make some stress in specific words when giving instructions, so students know what words they need to pay attention to understand. For example, the teacher was introducing some vocabulary in the course TB1 1.1 related to adjectives, so she would say the adjective louder in some sentences for the students to repeat and memorize it. Finally, I want to highlight that the teacher speaks in a good pace, sometimes lowering the velocity of her speech for students to understand. Personally, I think that the verbal delivery of the teacher is appropriate for the level of the students and really works with teens as sometimes they might divert from the class or feel like no participating.

Regarding the non verbal communication, the teacher likes to move around the classroom, and she doesn't just stay next to the board, so students feel closer and engaged with the class. Likewise, she likes to mimic vocabulary and act. For example, when teaching some adjectives she would act like it, if the adjective was "active", she would be active, if it was "artistic", she would act as if she was painting. I personally think that is pretty useful when memorizing some words. If you don't remember you can mimic the action to remind yourself of the word. Finally, it's important to highlight that she was all the time happy with a big smile on her face, doing eye contact with students and listen carefully to them. I think that it is pretty catchy and students feel listened.

What about me? (Bonus)

I think that my delivery in the warm up activity was good. I tried to use a good volume and adapt my register so students could understand my assignment. I was all the time happy and attentive to the interventions of my students. Nonetheless, something that I need to improve is my posture and movement. Sometimes I was moving too much and acting a little be distracting, because I was a little nervous. Luckily, that didn't interfered with the activity and my students were most of the time engaged and listening to my instructions. Finally, something that I want to try more is to be more expressive as my team teacher.  She is really cheerful and likes to act when giving her classes. Meanwhile, I'm more reserved. It doesn't mean that I'm stiff all the time, but a like to maintain a posture and no being so over expressive all the time.  

How to communicate with parents? What recommendations can I give?

After talking to my team teacher, the most important tip she gave me when talking to parents face-to-face is to always keep my cool and respond in the most respectful, yet assertive way possible. Luckily, she told that in her experience at the Colombo, she have never came across any disrespectful father. Most of the time the parents are really receptive and respectful. Regarding online communication with Q10 or email, she told me that it is always important to reply with courtesy and with a good range of time. This doesn't mean to answer as soon as the parents send a chat, but to answer properly. If the teacher doesn't know, they can ease links like "trámites y solicitudes" or contact the PS in case something happens in face-to-face classes.

Reflection:

I personally believe that communication is a key component when addressing students and parents. As teachers, we need to be aware of the way we communicate to make our classes more understandable and engaging for students. Everything counts from the tone, pace and intonation to the movement, posture and nonverbal language. Likewise, it is always crucial to know how to handle parents as sometimes there can be situations where parents can be rude or disrespectful. It is always important to maintain an open position, yet to know how to keep myself calm to answer properly.